https://phys.org/biology-news/ecology en-us The latest science and research news on ecology Insecticide use is a major factor causing a decrease in the size and diversity of butterfly populations across the US Midwest, reports Braeden Van Deynze of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and colleagues in a study published June 20 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-insecticides-contribute-butterfly-species-midwest.html Plants & Animals Ecology Thu, 20 Jun 2024 14:00:02 EDT news638093342 Chimpanzees appear to consume plants with medicinal properties to treat their ailments, according to a study published on June 20 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Elodie Freymann from the University of Oxford, UK, and colleagues. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-wild-chimpanzees-medicinal-illness-injuries.html Plants & Animals Ecology Thu, 20 Jun 2024 14:00:02 EDT news638092921 A devastating hurricane transformed a monkey society by changing the pros and cons of interacting with others, new research shows. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-hurricane-game-monkey-society.html Plants & Animals Ecology Thu, 20 Jun 2024 14:00:02 EDT news638090481 A team of medical researchers and infectious disease specialists affiliated with multiple institutions in China, working with a pair of colleagues, one from Singapore, the other from Canada, has found evidence bolstering theories that suggest as the planet warms, fungi could become more dangerous to humans. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-scientists-evidence-climate-fungi-dangerous.html Ecology Cell & Microbiology Thu, 20 Jun 2024 10:47:35 EDT news638099250 A new study presents video evidence that at least one species of terrestrial leech can jump, behavior that scientists have debated for more than a century. Researchers from the American Museum of Natural History, Fordham University, and City University of New York (CUNY)'s Medgar Evers College published the footage and corresponding analysis in the journal Biotropica. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-conclusive-video-evidence-terrestrial-leech.html Plants & Animals Ecology Thu, 20 Jun 2024 10:00:01 EDT news638090881 Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology report the discovery of at least six orders of endosymbiont Symbiodolus clandestinus, which lives inside insect cells. Using fluorescence in situ hybridization, they showed that Symbiodolus is present in all life stages and tissues of infected insects. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-hidden-partners-symbiodolus-bacteria-insect.html Ecology Cell & Microbiology Thu, 20 Jun 2024 09:32:38 EDT news638094754 An international team of scientists has recently found that non-native species are expanding their ranges many orders of magnitude faster than native ones, in large part due to inadvertent human help. Even seemingly sedentary non-native plants are moving at three times the speed of their native counterparts in a race where, because of the rapid pace of climate change and its effect on habitat, speed matters. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-native-animals-ranges-faster-species.html Plants & Animals Ecology Wed, 19 Jun 2024 12:15:03 EDT news638018101 A study published in the journal BioScience sheds light on the importance of gray wolves in the western United States. Led by William Ripple, a scientist at Oregon State University and the Conservation Biology Institute, the research delves into the implications of large predator absence on plant and animal communities, and ecosystem functions. It calls attention to "shifting baselines" wherein increasingly degraded conditions are viewed as reflecting the historical state of a system. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-illuminates-ecological-importance-gray-wolves.html Plants & Animals Ecology Wed, 19 Jun 2024 10:33:54 EDT news638012027 A team of researchers at the University of Zurich has discovered that plants benefit from a greater variety of interactions with pollinators and herbivores. Plants that are pollinated by insects and have to defend themselves against herbivores have evolved to be better adapted to different types of soil. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-interaction-insects-evolution.html Evolution Ecology Wed, 19 Jun 2024 09:35:02 EDT news638008501 When trees and livestock compete for land, the trees usually lose. It doesn't have to be this way. But centrally designed plans to implement tree-livestock coexistence in deforested areas don't always work on faraway farmland. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-women-sustainable-livestock-farming-bordering.html Ecology Agriculture Tue, 18 Jun 2024 16:49:53 EDT news637948190 A team of zoologists and marine biologists affiliated with several institutions in Indonesia, working with a colleague from Germany, has discovered previously unknown instances of fluorescence in 27 marine creatures. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-team-biologists-fluorescence-marine-creatures.html Plants & Animals Ecology Tue, 18 Jun 2024 12:50:01 EDT news637933494 Scientists have created a research framework to incorporate ecological theory—mathematical models and concepts to understand interactions and dynamics of ecosystems—into ecosystem management and planning to more effectively scale restoration and counter rising carbon dioxide emissions globally. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-harnessing-ecological-theory-successful-ecosystem.html Ecology Tue, 18 Jun 2024 12:06:04 EDT news637931161 While there is an increasing consensus among humans that corporal discipline of children does more harm than good, fish may disagree. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-fish-offspring.html Plants & Animals Ecology Tue, 18 Jun 2024 11:53:03 EDT news637930382 The iconic marsupial can regulate its temperature to a greater degree than previously thought—but this could prove troublesome as global warming bites. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-koalas-hottest-days-summer.html Plants & Animals Ecology Tue, 18 Jun 2024 11:35:03 EDT news637929301 In a study published in the journal Cell, a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, describes for the first time how odors are encoded in the antennal lobe, the olfactory center in the brain of migratory locusts. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-odors-encoded-brains-migratory-locusts.html Ecology Cell & Microbiology Tue, 18 Jun 2024 11:00:01 EDT news637921789 Most of us are aware that climate change is altering our world. But it can also make certain natural disasters, like hurricanes, more likely in places where susceptible species reside. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-global-natural-hazards-threaten-species.html Plants & Animals Ecology Tue, 18 Jun 2024 10:38:03 EDT news637925881 Beneath the surface, bacterivorous nematodes are key players in the nutrient cycle, consuming bacteria that decompose organic matter. Traditionally, these nematodes are studied in laboratory environments where isolated bacterial strains are used to monitor interactions on petri dishes. However, such settings do not accurately mimic the complex microbial ecosystems found in natural environments. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-nematode-microbe-interactions-lab-simulated.html Plants & Animals Ecology Tue, 18 Jun 2024 09:34:13 EDT news637922050 A multidisciplinary, multi-institutional team of researchers in the U.S. has found that starlings that fly in a follower position expend 25% less energy than when they fly solo. In their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group designed complex experiments to learn more about the amount of energy savings for birds following another bird in flight rather than going it alone. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-starlings-expend-energy-position-flying.html Plants & Animals Ecology Tue, 18 Jun 2024 09:30:01 EDT news637921650 Hundreds of thousands more breeding pairs of seabirds could return to remote island archipelagos if invasive rats were removed and native vegetation restored, a new paper finds. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-rat-free-islands-hundreds-thousands.html Plants & Animals Ecology Tue, 18 Jun 2024 04:00:01 EDT news637858108 A group of scientists has released the first comprehensive list of birds that haven't been seen in more than a decade, with the help of Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-scientists-lost-birds-aid-species.html Plants & Animals Ecology Mon, 17 Jun 2024 12:49:02 EDT news637847267 Using genome reconstruction, scientists unveiled a once "invisible" fish parasite present in many marine fish world-wide that belongs to the apicomplexans, one of the most important groups of parasites at a clinical level. However, it had gone unnoticed in previous studies. The parasite is geographically and taxonomically widespread in fish species around the planet, with implications for commercial fishing and oceanic food webs. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-genome-reconstruction-reveals-previously-uncharacterized.html Ecology Molecular & Computational biology Mon, 17 Jun 2024 12:42:41 EDT news637846955 Solitary bees have a shorter lifespan compared to honeybees, usually lasting the spring or summer season. These bees have limited time to perform a lot of pollination work and they can use all the help they can get. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-size-maximize-pollination-capabilities-solitary.html Plants & Animals Ecology Mon, 17 Jun 2024 12:19:08 EDT news637845545 Redlining, a discriminatory lending practice that originated in the 1930s and blocked people of color from getting mortgages in certain neighborhoods, has significantly altered the distribution of wildlife in four of California's largest cities, according to a first-of-its-kind study published June 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-urban-wildlife-diverse-historically-redlined.html Ecology Mon, 17 Jun 2024 09:38:04 EDT news637835881 Newfound evidence reveals that the upsurge of the exotic Nile perch in Lake Victoria had long-lasting effects on the genetic diversity of various local cichlid species, report scientists from Tokyo Tech. Through large-scale comparative genomic analyses, the researchers found concrete proof in the collective genome of multiple species that this artificially introduced perch decimated many local fish populations, causing a "bottleneck effect." https://phys.org/news/2024-06-nile-perch-invasion-triggered-genetic.html Ecology Molecular & Computational biology Mon, 17 Jun 2024 09:15:04 EDT news637834501 The life strategies of a multitude of soil faunal taxa can strongly affect the formation of labile and stabilized organic matter in soil, with potential consequences for how soils are managed as carbon sinks, nutrient stores, or providers of food. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-soil-fauna-potential-fundamentally-carbon.html Ecology Cell & Microbiology Mon, 17 Jun 2024 08:26:32 EDT news637831592 New research by Swansea University and the University of Zurich has found that sharks retained high levels of functional diversity for most of the last 66 million years, before steadily declining over the last 10 million years to its lowest value in the present day. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-sharks-depleted-functional-diversity-million.html Ecology Paleontology & Fossils Fri, 14 Jun 2024 12:17:04 EDT news637586222 A novel study published in Nature Communications found that agroecosystems in Central Germany, specifically grasslands and croplands, may have an enhanced capacity to provide multiple goods and services simultaneously when land management reduces the use of pesticides and mineral nitrogen fertilizer. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-climate-affect-ecosystems-ability-multiple.html Ecology Agriculture Fri, 14 Jun 2024 10:10:09 EDT news637578601 Magnesium compounds are a common ingredient of many remedies designed to help people wind down and escape the stresses of modern life. However, a new study has shown it is not only humans that are using forms of the chemical as a way to help them survive challenging conditions. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-magnesium-potion-enables-sandhoppers-survive.html Plants & Animals Ecology Fri, 14 Jun 2024 09:17:03 EDT news637575421 In a transdisciplinary study, a research team led by IGB has developed insect-friendly street lighting and tested it in the Dark Sky Reserve Westhavelland as well as in three German municipalities. Tailored and shielded road lights make the light source almost invisible outside the illuminated area and significantly reduces the lethal attraction for flying insects in different environments. The researchers see this as an important technical solution to reduce insect mortality. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-road-dead-insects-insect-friendly.html Plants & Animals Ecology Thu, 13 Jun 2024 13:44:50 EDT news637505085 In the deep-sea environment of the East Pacific Rise, where sunlight does not penetrate and the surroundings are known for their extreme temperatures, skull-crushing pressures, and toxic compounds, lives Riftia pachyptila, a giant hydrothermal vent tubeworm. Growing up to 6 feet tall with a deep-red plume, Riftia does not have a digestive system but thrives off its symbiotic relationship with bacteria that live deep within its body. These billions of bacteria fix carbon dioxide to sugars to sustain themselves and the tubeworm. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-giant-deep-sea-vent-tubeworm.html Ecology Cell & Microbiology Thu, 13 Jun 2024 11:50:05 EDT news637498202